Creamy Mushrooms at Flour Mill Cafe. Photo / Getty Images
Creamy Mushrooms at Flour Mill Cafe. Photo / Getty Images
Flour Mill Cafe 409a Manukau Rd, Epsom Ph: (09) 949 1099 We spent: $78 for two adults and three (small) children
We arrived: Manukau Rd is a funny old street when it comes to dining. South of the Green Lane intersection it offers tasty stalwarts KK Malaysian and One Tree Grill and the newerand much-lauded Little Jimmy but from Green Lane north, it's a virtual culinary wasteland until you reach Newmarket - and even then …
Flour Mill attempts to fill that gap but not especially capaciously - a more appropriate name would probably be Flour Sack. Still, we came in hot with two adults and three children and we were able to get a seat on a school holiday weekday morning, so let's not carp or be overly precious about size.
We ate: Flour Mill is trying to be neither fancy nor ambitious. Epsom is synonymous with conservatism and Flour Mill fits the regional stereotype. The breakfast menu is six items long (excluding sides) and, in support of my thesis, is worth repeating in full: eggs on toast, steak and eggs, creamy mushrooms, buttermilk french toast, omelette, salmon bagel.
We ate the french toast and the creamy mushrooms. Partially by dint of their lack of ambition, partially because they were technically sound, they were satisfyingly adequate examples of brunch standards. This sounds like faint praise and, to some extent, it is but there is a place for straightforward food done well. That place is Epsom.
We observed: The aged brick interior coupled with the tiny size gives the cafe a feeling best described as cosy with benefits. It's bright and homely and would be a beautiful place to sit quietly for a while if you weren't there with three kids.
Because it's set a little bit back from Manukau Rd, it doesn't suffer so much from the road noise. If you squint very hard you could say it feels a little like a pastoral scene in Devon, say, or the Dutch countryside - a little farm house into which you've dropped on your way to sell your magic beans at the market. The coffee is good, the service is fast. It's not a place you'll linger for hours but nor is it a place you'll be in a hurry to leave.
